This is an archive of updates made to mikeystmnt.com from 2002-2008. Updates from 2008-2012 are archived separately along with the full website, and are not available on the blogger platform. Maybe one day I'll be able to bring the website back to life, but for now, you can use this archive to take a trip down memory lane.
Keep it green!
-Mikey

Friday, December 21, 2007

-->> ..sorry ,Gang-green.. i'm all over the map this week ..so news posts are little weird as of the past few days..::

Thus were several forces at work, threads weaving together into a thickening darkness that I perceived (perhaps with a bit of paranoia) was being thrown over me: I was working alone, the Archie guys wanted me out, and Mirage Publishing was suddenly expanding into color.

But I suppose it’s a little more complicated than that, or at least less linear....

A few months earlier Mirage began the second volume of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series, deciding, in an inverted Sisyphean logic, that the greatly added expense of printing in color would boost the sagging sales and increasing losses of the first volume series. This, of course, was new ground, a territory previously “owned” by the TMNT Adventures title, but more so by Archie Comics, who had the exclusive right to print in color for newsstand distribution.

Not that Mirage was going newsstand with volume two. But it was entering the direct-sales market with a color title. The big enchiladas at Archie Comics didn’t like this, as they too had their eye on the direct-sales market since they were going through an across the board decline in newsstand sales as the number of children reading comics plummeted with the increased competition from video games. They were secretly making plans for a more direct-sales oriented TMNTA comic. Plans that did not involve me or anyone else at Mirage.

Factor in where my head was at – unsupported by anyone else at Mirage (artists and owners alike), increasingly isolated by the actions and attitude of the publishing department, under attack by Archie – and, well, no wonder my depression – generally low level and manageable - worsened.

I was starting to give up the fight, as it were - something I rarely do.

To be continued….

(Pictured: the cover to the original TMNT Adventures #73, the third issue of The Forever War story arc. Pencils by Chris Allan. Inks by, um, Octavious Spore.)"